vaultofthearchonfandomcom-20200214-history
142438-aurin-still-cant-be-medics-or-engi-this-makes-me-sad-page-2
Page 1, Page 2 Content Actually, recognizing that the setting is (1) not static, and is (2) designed around the game is not, in itself, at all a bad thing. The setting informs the game, but also explains the game-as-we-find-it. Why only one planet? Because this planet is The Important Planet. Why no chua warriors? Because all those who have tried it to date have failed and died. But we acknowledge that things in our setting can change and develop, by adding new instead of un-writing what came before. That's a healthy way of looking at the setting for the game. Far better than making use of raw Hand-Wavium refined Hand-Wavium is much more satisfying to the audience or retro-active continuity "ret-con". Will every chua always fail in the future to be able to be a Warrior? Maybe. That's in the future, and is not a core element of Plot-Arc, and so is open to possibility. Likewise things like accessibility of Hoverboards. Or the development of new dungeons that are not completely Main Story Arc plotlines. Better by far than some companies' "er... well, what you thought was true was not true this entire time, and retroactively you've always known about such-and-such we just never included it before." Edited October 14, 2015 by Gnapoleon | |} ---- ---- After 1,000 years of contact with the Dominion, nobody can tell male and female Chua apart (including the players) let alone how they reproduce: In a setting with ultra-tech medical scanners and psychic interrogation, there are theories about how Chua reproduce. Seriously. Budding. Spores. Eggs. Nobody knows. This is the lore for a cartoon/RPG universe. Don't expect it to be The Silmarillion. It's not meant to be taken as a simulation of a realistic world. And there are going to be discrepancies that can't really be explained in lore, because they're necessary parts of how the game works as a game (such as why the different factions can't understand one another). | |} ---- If that's true then why does it seem that SWTOR Imperials are more popular then Republic? The Republic in game isnt actually like the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars movies. But i'm guessing that people link the two together anyways and think that Republic = Rebels. I mean Imperial = Imperial so Republic must be Rebels...even though they arent really rebelling in SWTOR and are more of a government run faction. But still i dont think thats what people look at when choosing their faction at least not in SWTOR. One of the things i've said repeatedly on the forums is how WS has very little to no "badass" characters that people could try to emulate with their in game character. Star Wars has Boba Fett, Jango Fett,Darth Maul, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine and the many other characters from EU and other games. AND there are even classes and abilities in SWTOR that allow people to roleplay as their favorite character. Bounty Hunters with one pistol or two, death from above ability, flamethrowers, rockets, rocket pack, Sith Assassin, double edged lightsabers, Zabraks species (Darth Mauls species) Sith Warriors, Vader-look-alike armor, force choke. Wildstar has nothing close to those characters...just from flicks and advertising we have Kit Brinny, Malvolio Portius and some of the more prominent NPCs in game are Durek and Artemis Zin. Kit comes off as goofy and likeable in the flicks...Malvolio as old and stuffy. I mean...if you could only have 1 friend and your choice is between the *cupcake* old fart and the cool chick that would probably friendzone you (the zone which you *know* you are going to try like hell to get out of) which one would you pick? With all the Snooki and Kardashian reality tv nonsense i guess people dont Like Artemis Zin either though i find her pretty likeable. I've said it numerous AND I MEAN NUMEROUS times just like you said that Dominion needs some good PR or some time in the spotlight, or some flick/trailer that shows off how badass they can be. I was actually kinda ticked off that the F2P trailer had mostly Exiles on it with like what? 2 seconds of Dominion face time? i mean come on Carbine...they do listen to us on a lot of things but omg could they please listen to us on this one tiny thing too? | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- But then what's the purpose of the story/game anyway? The entire game hinges on the fact that Exiles need a new home and Dominion wants to conquer Nexus to find the secrets of the Eldan and add another planet to their grasp. But the lack of PvP questing is probably because...Well, that's a whole 'nother topic my friends. | |} ---- ---- Indeed. Carbine, your "lore dumps" are contradicted directly by evidence in your own game. | |} ---- That story can still VERY easily exist without splitting the actual gameplay and players into two uneven groups that can't interact with each other. Every dominion an exile player fights against is an NPC. Every exile character a dominion player crushes is an NPC. At what point does an exile and dominion player EVER fight each other to further the story? I'll save you the trouble: Never. Because Wildstar isn't a PVP-centric game. It's not built around fighting over pvp objectives. It's build around PVE raids and dungeons, with a side-order of PVE open area questing. The story and lore can still be played out through the quests and lore books. But when it comes time to form a raid group or run a dungeon there should be no barrier, no splitting of the players for lore reasons, no faction imbalance creating excessively long queues. And if you REALLLLLY want a lore explanation for having no faction split for group content, then maybe, just MAYBE the Entity and other threats are dangerous enough for the horde and allia....I mean, the Exile and Dominion...to work together. After which they can go back to fighting over who gets to exploit Nexus. | |} ---- ---- Pretty much this. If there's going to be new race/class combinations, I'd rather it was weaved into the overall story somehow than retconned into existence as that would be exactly the sort of hand-waving that other people are complaining about as to why certain race/class combinations aren't availble already. It would be a more geniniune admission of giving people what they wanted by making the addtion signigicant instead of Carbine just pretending like the option was always there and people were just silly for not noticing. +++ Pure aestitic is part of it, yeah, even when it comes to the Fleets far more people love the look of the Imperial one versus the Republic. Another factor to consider is that faction choice doesn't really "lock you in" as it were. First, no race is truly faction-locked. Sure, you can't *initially* play as any race you want on both factions, but you can bypass the restriction easily enough by either buying the unlock or simply playing a race to level 50. Bonus points: Doing this not only lets you be that race on any faction, it also completely removes previous class restrictions too. Want to be a Miraluka Sniper named Blinken or a Chiss Sage named Brainysmurf? Wish granted ...assuming someone hasn't already taken the names anyway. Second, the Republic and Empire alike are painted to look pretty "gray" on the morality scale when it comes to their NPCs and missions whereas the Exiles and Dominion got coated a noticeable shade of white and black respectively (albeit this probably wasn't intentional), there's also the matter that one's faction in SWTOR does not dictate a indiviual player's own decisions due to the alignment system. In contrast, you don't really get a say in how your character does a mission in WS outside of just outright not doing it. That isn't to say I think WildStar's way of doing things is wrong, they just have their own angle they're working from (and personally speaking, I've had more fun in WS than SWTOR), it's just that there's certain details that could help explain why one galaxy-spanning empire is hurting for good PR to rectify faction imbalance and the other is the dominant faction on nearly every server regardless of type. Hell, probably explains why the game's next expansion is, at least from a storyline persepctive, destroying the known factions and building back up a more united one against a far greater threat; The developers knew it was far too late to convince more people to roll Pub side and it's not like the game had much in the way of open world PVP anyway. :P | |} ---- I wasnt talking so much about the races which i know are available to both factions after unlocks. I know that this topic is talking about race and faction availability. But i was replying to someone else and how they say people identify with Exiles cause they are rebels and plucky. But in SWTOR the evil authoritarian Empire seems to be the more popular faction. I want to know why someone would choose Imperial over Republic. AND how they could make that choice even before seeing the aesthetics of the fleets, starter planets or capital planets. What is it that drives people to roll Imperials in SWTOR before even getting to see what a lot of the content looks like? and only seeing what they see on character creation or youtube videos? its just a theory but i think its all those characters that i mentioned like Boba Fett, Maul, Vader. I think people play Imperial not because they like the way the fleet looks but because they want to *be* Boba Fett...they want to *be* Darth Maul...they want to *be* Vader. Notice how in Empire Strikes Back Boba Fett doesnt hesitate to speak up to Vader? "he's no good to me dead". I mean Vader will force choke Admirals and Generals over the screen like its nothing but here is this bounty hunter saying you better not kill my guy. I mean...how many people said to themselves when SWTOR came out "yahhhh! this is badass i'm totally gonna roll a Jedi Knight and go attend to some trade negotiations!!!"? I mean Boba Fett who barely has any lines in the movie has what seems like a pretty big cult following outside of SWTOR even today. There's that pulp fiction t-shirt but instead of the two hitmen its got boba and vaders head on it. Is there a t-shirt out there of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan sitting at a conference table drinking tea waiting to start trade negotiations? How many people cosplay Boba Fett? theres even ladies doing the skimpy Boba Fett cosplays. Thats pretty remarkable for a character that has barely any spoken dialogue, little screen time and was made like 30+ years ago. See we need something like *that* in Wildstar on the Dominion side. But Wildstar doesnt have movies or a bunch of EU books or toys or whatever else. We're left with Flicks and Trailers. Edited October 14, 2015 by wildstarnewbie | |} ---- ---- Because, like you said, the Empire has 40 years of Darth Vader and Boba Fett as spokespeople. That's what I mean by the Dominion needing good PR. :) Also, WildStar is often touted as being "like Firefly". Which side would most people want to play in a Firefly-inspired MMO, the Browncoats or the side that I'm going to have to look up on Google because I can't remember what they were called? The Browncoats resonate with people, the Alliance (which should have been simple enough to remember) don't quite have the kind of character that would make them a side people would be lining up to play. Edited October 14, 2015 by MadBlue | |} ---- The sad thing is that you can say that about any theme park MMO. Or hell, just about every game with two warring factions. But sadly, the closest thing you'll ever get to is the merc mode in Ashran in Warlords. Since every other game with two factions has a real nasty tendency to beat you over the head with "OTHER SIDE BAD GRRR" But Madda digresses. TL;DR: Dominion ques aren't that long anymore. Agreed, but what we have is what we got, and that's not including everything that you listed. In fact, that's the entire point of having two rivaling factions. To know that there's always a constant threat or competition of who's better, who will get x first, etc. Which they seemed to be going for, sadly. Madda never knew that Carbine writer's fell into the "WoW syndrome" where every threat brings both factions together. Because it's super hard to focus on winning both fights between the Entity and the Exiles/Dominion. They just HAVE to work together. Even though you could give the same scenario to a college classroom for a project and they could easily break down this "work together to survive" trope. Again, Madda digresses. | |} ---- Having popular "spokesmen" helps too I'm sure, I was just pointing out that there's other factors that might account for it as not everyone going into the game wants to imitate an existing character from the movies or Expanded Universe. Now that you mention it though, even during character creation there's potential biases being applied. All of the classes, male and female, have different voice actors and you get a sample of how they'll sound during the course of creating them and it's not long after that you'll be hearing more of them on the starter planets. (IE: Soon enough to consider deleting and re-rolling.) That said, a lot of people will argue that Imperial classes got the better VAs overall, and further claim that they have the superior class stories and companions/romance options. As well, there's certain cosmetics that are initially Republic and Imperial only for Zabraks and Cyborgs, so even if someone wanted a Darth Maul lookalike, they would *have* to make them Imperial first because that's the only faction that allows you to use the appropriate red skin and tattoo designs (at least until you get that Zabrak to level 50.) Likewise, it's arguable that Imperial cryborgs have a greater amount of variety between classes compared to Republic ones where each class has more strict options (though it makes Pub cyborgs feel unique from each other compared to Imp ones). Finally, it occurs to me that a lot of the promotional material for SWTOR had a heavy Imperial bias, right down to the cinematic trailers. For those unfamiliar with these: Return https://youtu.be/mm4JEZudf0c Hope https://youtu.be/CDuYZ0-NUHw Deceived https://youtu.be/AMQ51v6Nafo Keep in mind, these were used to help advertise the game before release. "Return" is also the intro cutscene to the whole game, "Hope" is the first thing new Republic players watch, and "Deceived" is what new Imperial players watch. Regardless of one's experience with Star Wars in the past, SWTOR doesn't paint the Republic in a particularly flattering light by making them look like beaten dogs at every turn while Imperials are touted as nearly unstoppable badasses. (That's the Republic's *capital world* being razed in Deceived.) Hell, even without the likes of Vader or Fett, SWTOR its self gives the Imperials plenty of memorable NPCs to hype themselves with (even the new expansion is primarily using Imperial NPCs-turned-companions as a selling point), they even got the better of the two Revan based flashpoints. (And if there's one thing a lot of SWTOR players seem to adore, it's Revan.) In that regards, yeah, I can see why some Dominion folks might be a little disappointed with their faction's PR, to the point I've heard that they gave their arkship a story overhaul because it was *that bad* of a first impression for some people. I mean, did you older folks really have to torture your own NPCs, watch them get turned into mutant monstrosities by that Mondo guy, and gawk at "racist caricatures" of the Exiles? At least tell me that there was really an Aurin saboteur involved the whole time. | |} ---- ---- ---- Hi from Rift. This is so hypocritical. You hold their lore up as a justification but then dismiss its inconsistencies even though lore is your defense. If they're gonna restrict classes based on lore, then they better make damn sure they're actually consistent. So no, I'm not gonna just accept that they're going to do a shoddy job. I'm gonna expect that they don't make a contradictory mess of the situation. "Where do mounts/pets come from?" is not at all the same kind of issue as: There is a MORDESH honored in Thayd's museum who is an ESPER. These are things they clearly thought about and yet now they're back-tracking like crazy. It's silly, especially when you're trying to argue against giving people options to play the way they want, which in no way damages your own experience and would in fact make the game world more consistent. | |} ---- That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying there are going to be things that contradict lore because it's a game. I fully agree that the Mordesh Esper is an issue that should be explained in lore - that should either have been changed to be a different race on release or the Mordesh should have had Esper as a class on release (and I've said as much before that they probably originally intended for Mordesh to be able to be Espers). But if you're going to say "If Aurin can't be Engineers, then explain why Aurin can take the Soldier or Scientist Path or the Technologist tradeskill," you're not going to come to a satisfactory lore explanation, and if you expect one, you open it up to things like "If someone with the Soldier path can use all those weapons, why can't they use all those weapons for their class," or "how can a character be a Technologist without being a Scientist" or "how can I be a master Weaponsmith without even being capable of equipping the weapons". You just aren't going to find an explanation that fits with lore (or logic) any more than you would if you asked for a lore-based explanation of why you're able to pass through other players, because the issue is only there because it's a game. If they restricted lore to only that which would hold up under intense scrutiny to every mechanic in the game, they wouldn't have much to work with. Edited October 15, 2015 by MadBlue | |} ---- The reason I chose Imperial is more of the time I was raised in than anything else. Being born in the early 90s and growing up most of the star wars movies and other material possibly influenced my choice. But aside from any of that, I just hated that choosing most of the light options made it seem like people were just using you and by god I am not going to sit through that. Must be the reason I had roughly 15 imperial characters, most if not all were Dark 5. That, and well I just love reds and blacks so obviously the imperial side fit me like a glove :). The one problem I had with swtor in the roughly 2-3 years that I played it was that the light/dark choices were often polarizing towards either being a total douche or you being a mindless tool. Seeing as how I hate the mindless tool thing I mostly went dark, even if I did make a pub (which was rare). Anyone remember turning Bastila dark in Knights?....I loved that version of her. As far as Wildstar goes, I specifically had no lore reason to choose my faction. My guild chose Dommie so I went dommie, simple as that. I for one didn't mind the dommie arkship tutorial, then again based on the comments I made just now I may or may not be sadisitic enough to like it. ;) Sorry for my sporadic thoughts, kinda distracted at the moment :). | |} ---- ---- Thisthisthisthisthisthis. | |} ---- I agree that they really could do a better job at that. They've mentioned in Loremageddon that "Aurin can be uncomfortable around any mechanical beings" and "they are not averse to integrating technology where appropriate and useful". It's not unfeasible that Aurin would use nanosuits to augment their ability to hide (in fact I think that was brought up in one of the Lore Dumps). Also, considering "tree" and "forest" are mentioned 34 times in the Loremageddon entry, the fact that their planet was torn apart by huge machines, and they have a philosophy about connection to the Weave, Engineer seems like it would be an anathema for an Aurin, as they would probably see it as the epitome of cutting yourself off from nature and surrounding yourself with cold dead metal. That's the way I would have phrased it, at any rate. But would that really have made a difference if they did phrase it that way? People would say "but they allowed themselves to be put in cryopods and those are literally cold dead metal". I know I'm not wrong there. :D The thing is, if you're expecting some lore-based reason why they can still have access to the Paths, mounts and Tradeskills while not having access to Engineer and Medic, you're not going to be satisfied. MMOs have a long history of race/class restrictions, but no MMO is going to bar a character from accessing basic game features based on the race they choose - and the Paths are a novel way to cater to player motivations, so the last thing Carbine would want to do is put restrictions on them. So there are going to be tech-laden Aurin in a science fiction game. It simply can't be helped because otherwise it would make Aurin an unplayable race. Essentially, though, Aurin don't have access to Engineer because they're "the nature loving race" and Engineer doesn't fit the concept. Just like Granok don't have Esper because they're the "the beer-swilling warrior race" and Esper doesn't fit the concept. And the lore is built up from that. It's impossible to fit the entire game lore around player character race/class restrictions though. And Wildstar is an MMO that has race/class/faction restrictions, like many other MMOs. It's not an MMO that doesn't have race/class/faction restrictions, like many other MMOs. I don't think there's a right and a wrong way to do an MMO, although people certainly have their preferences. That being said, I'm all for expanding the race/class combinations - but put it in the game story. Have some "crazy" Aurin NPC who won a battle by climbing into a battlesuit and commanding bots, inspiring other Aurin to follow suit. Have the Mechari make that scientific breakthrough that allows them to tap into their psionic potential. There are great stories that can be told given the lore that they're already presented. And those off-the-cuff explanations were pretty funny. :D | |} ---- See that's the thing. Stalker Aurin are INJECTING themselves with "cold, dead metal." They aren't just surrounding themselves with it, they're bringing it into their very being! No techno-phobic excuse is going to reason away why Aurin can't be medics or engineers (and strength for warriors doesn't work since they're only slightly smaller than humans, and human females barely have arms to begin with) Also, dat stalker pvp outfit looks hella metal plated (and a lot more impermeable than the engineer's exosuit) to me. '3' And this is why I don't want a specific lore excuse spelled out for these situations. A "/shrug, it's a videogame" does less damage to the lore's integrity than "all aurin hate machines, except when they don't, but they don't like this specific kind of machines, but are ok with these other, more complex machines, and these simpler machines, and etc etc etc" Also some folk consider classes/archetypes as basic game features. For me, my favorite dominion race is pretty much unplayable because they can't be a mage archetype. :T See, I just don't see Wildstar as a game that is defined by its race/class restrictions. Especially since this is a science fiction MMO where the races don't really have a patron deity (outside of the mechari) that totally do exist and totally do have reality bending powers to grant their magic-powers-giving essence to their favorite race and deny powers to their least favorite race at a wave of a narrative hand. I hold science fiction to a higher degree of sense-making than I would hold pure fantasy to. And for me to be convinced of any concrete, defining limitations of any race, something I would consider thematic to the game as whole, I shouldn't be able to see contradictions this quickly. Honest, I'd be much more ok with racial restrictions if was implemented to supplement any deep in-game racial characterization. But for the entirety of wildstar, outside the character creation, all the races are already functionally and narratively homogenized. Each race speaks the same language, wears the same pajamas, gets the same training, starts in the same place (for their faction), has the option to branch out to either of the starting zones (for their faction) with a bit of half-racial twist just to get a sense of a theme to the races' mascot npcs, then all the races converge to the same city (for their faction), speak and work with the same exact contacts, have access to the same exact modes of transportation, same exact means of commerce, same exact tools for living on nexus. Even the factions are working towards the same exact goals in the same exact ways. With the Exiles being space nomads, crammed in a few beat-up spaceships, and the Dominion being a collection of assimilated races, there's no concept of "home" for any of the races outside the humans. Everyone else just has to piggyback off of the human's default culture in this universe. Of course, it doesn't help that no one in this game has any first-hand reference to their race's homeworld and culture. And just so I can get it out of my system: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,. ok, much better. And I'm all for adding story to this expansion. Though I would have to argue about the story being in-game. You can't really change the game world too much for the release of the limitation removal or else you're going to have people creating special snowflake Granok and Chua when Granok and Chua had already been swinging claws and turning invisible for 6 months, and I don't think it would be worth it to implement a bunch of new questlines for certain specific race/class combos just so that they can be removed when the idea is no longer novel to the gameworld. I think it would work better in a flick. And honestly, if it's not clear already, this is all a critique on Carbine's reckless lore writing than the idea of actually utilizing lore to explain game mechanics. I'm pretty much a sucker for trying to explain away every little thing in a game, but I like things to make sense when they are explained. TL;DR: I seriously think Carbine needs an editor or five. I try. -_- Edited October 15, 2015 by Roda | |} ---- With all due respect to Madda, gamers are already competitive enough on their own without contriving some arbitrary split in the playerbase. There's already enough rampant elitism going around without adding more to it. | |} ---- Fair enough. We're obviously not going to agree on some things, but I do understand and respect your opinion, and you make some very good points that I do agree with, as well. :) Oh, yeah, a flick would be nice, and they could also throw in a datacube or some other lore you could pick up to learn about it in game. I was just thinking of ways they might implement it into a Drop. One of the problems with a themepark MMO is that pretty much everything is going to become outdated once the story moves on. Consider SWTOR, where, depending on your faction, you're essentially time-traveling when you go back to visit Balmorra or Taris. And any pre-Cataclysm expansion in WoW is a visit back in time (as is Cataclysm now, for that matter). You really wind up tying your hands as a developer if you hold yourself to avoiding that in a themepark MMO, though. That being said, if, for example, the Mechari attuning their crystals to psychic/magic energy is something that is considered groundbreaking plotwise, I don't see why it shouldn't be part of the story. Well, I can't disagree with that. :D | |} ---- I'm ok with race restrictions as long as they bring something meaningful to the game. This is an important distinction. Lets use League of Legends or DOTA2 as an example. Every single character in that game is different, and yet they all bring something unique and balanced to the game. If races were similar in that regard(completely different from each other, but balanced and bringing something unique to the game), then I would be much more willing to accept the restrictions. At that point a Granok engineer would be an entirely different playing experience than an chua engineer. If that makes sense. But as it is, races are NOT different. They're purely cosmetic. And that's why I don't agree with the restrictions based on something as flimsy as lore reasons. The costume system lets us wear heavy armor as an esper. Why can't I just put on my aurin suit with the costume system? The lore says that my aurin should abhor wearing heavy plates of dead metal, but there's that lore breaking costume that lets me deck the aurin out in full power armor. IMHO you either make the lore ironclad and actually relevant, or you admit that it's only there for flavor and DO NOT make gameplay decisions based on it. | |} ---- Reinforcements from other Dominion systems that had been in training but weren't ready for the initial invasion of Nexus, and long-lost cryopods hidden away in a back corner of the Exile mothership that were only recently discovered. Done. NEXT! | |} ---- ---- ---- I think the idea behind going with SpellSlinger vs Esper is that Esper has a more cerebral feel. If classes like the Charmer, Elementalist and Flux Reaver had made the cut, though, I could see them fitting the shamanistic roots of the Draken. Maybe one of the problems with the current class offerings is that there aren't enough to cover the concepts of each race (especially given race/class restrictions). If there were, for example, a pet-using Hunter class, Aurin and Draken players could really feel like their characters were close to the core of what their race is about (especially given the prevalence of Aurin and Draken hunters in their respective early leveling areas), and there definitely should be a class that channels the classic elements (since we have two that channel life and logic). Edited October 15, 2015 by MadBlue | |} ---- This is all I ask. '3' among some other things And I do understand your wants as well. Eh I think there's a difference between progressing from older content to newer content, and in the first 15 minutes of play, seeing hordes of people like you directly after being told you're a special snowflake. I personally think it would have a better place in the lore rather than the story. (Lore being the background information about the universe that we don't see, story being the in-game plot we follow, and narrative being all the game mechanics and how we directly interact with the game and its universe) Well, technically, it's called the "holowardrobe." It's just holograms of the outfit masking your character's actual gear. | |} ---- Amusingly, WoW still manages to use lore and technical reasons to explain away certain combinations. Take the upcoming Demon Hunter class, there's perfectly valid lore reasons for why the first ones out the gate can only be Blood/Night Elves, but when you look at what the class has going for it on the cosmetic side of things as well, you can see why Blizzard wanted to keep it limited to as few races as possible right now. (Same thing still happens with Druids too, in that Blizzard put themselves into a technical corner early on when they made the Cat/Bear forms unique between Night Elf & Tauren.) Similarly, there was much fanfare on Blizzard's part about certain new race/class combinations and sure enough people flocked to make them. Whereas others, like Worgen & Goblin Death Knights, got the "no lore, just pretend they were always there" excuse and got a lukewarm reception from the playerbase to where you'd think they forgot the option even exists because Worgen/Goblin Death Knights seem incredibly rare (or at least they were on the servers I visit). Given the choice, I'd again prefer Carbine to make any new race/class options "kind of a big deal" from a storyline point of view to get people excited about the idea and check them out (while conveniently allowing you to pay for race/class changes at the same time of course), because just dumping them on people with a "meh, fine, whatever" might have the opposite reaction. +++ I found being a light-side Sith Warrior terribly funny actually. "So you're saying this demonic-looking Juggernaut gave you a basket of space puppies and wished you a nice day?" "...Yes." "I don't know what kind of stims you've been hitting but you need to share." And then there was all the times I sent a Jedi into a fit when I out goody-two-shoed them, to the point of driving one crazy and making his Padawan defect to my side. (Mind you, she still does that even if you're dark-sided, but the lightside version of that event just sounds so much more delicious.) That said, sorry to anyone else here that I kept yammering about SWTOR, it's not meant to be a "oh look at how much better they did it" comparison (an outright lie anyway, WildStar rewards you for being subbed, being subbed in SWTOR makes you "not punished anymore") so much as part of the conversation about what people are willing to roll as in this game diverted to talking about reasons for faction imbalance outside of race/class restrictions. (To which it seems SWTOR and WS are equally matched in over-selling one faction while neglecting another.) I suppose there's also an air of general venting, as Bioware forbids F2P/Preferred from posting on their forums whereas Carbine doesn't seem to be treating me like a leper. | |} ---- ---- Problem: No matter what scenario your game will take place in, there will always be elitists. Having a "split" in the playerbase, at best, will have a minimal effect on that. Some people are just too competitive against others that don't see the point in it or find other ways that they can gain fun from the game. Heck, an argument can be made that it could only make the problem grow because with no boundary to seperate the people, the elitists could group together and begin their reign of carnage. That story, by the way, is not going to have both sides merge into one. Maybe in Everquest Next you'll have all the features you want, perhaps? | |} ---- ---- Espers are currently the most cerebral class in the game. '3' (and stalkers have to know how to use all their kit.) Also once again: Scientist and technologist are not racially limited. This issue doesn't just affect the Aurin. Well, they can start by putting out some damn trailers that have a dominion focused story. The dominion just doesn't have a solid out-of-game identity, compared to the exiles. Edited October 15, 2015 by Roda | |} ---- ---- Just gonna leave this here, and this was said five months ago. Still waiting on my Draken Medic. ;) | |} ---- the '3' face has many uses, the most common of which is "times when I feel like being a little shit" '3' And they are exactly not to balance out the races since "humans can be all classes because humans are typically the most played races in mmos" is something the devs told us once-upon-a-time. But yeh, don't hate us 'cause u ain't us. *swishes aurin tail majestically* B) Edited October 15, 2015 by Roda | |} ---- ---- ---- I hate to say it but these days Lore is the #1 thing that separates any one MMO from any other MMO. Everyone here can name, off the tops of their heads, at least five different titles that use the exact same function-archtypes that Wildstar does. Warrior = Tank, Medic = Healer, Stalker = Rogue, Esper = Wizard, etc etc. Nothing has really changed since original D&D came out 1974. The entire industry is locked in a formula as if on rails and we, the players of these games, are the ones to blame for it because innovation does not sell. We like to think it does, but in reality, no it does not. Just look at SWG. Oh wait, you can't, because it's gone. So if Lore be the one reason to stretch the bounds of the cookie cutter then so be it, says I. I'm not a fan of every race being nothing more than a cosmetic change without any tangible difference other that the class limits. Why are Granok and Mechari suseptible to poison and drowning? Why do Draken not have any melee attacks using claws and tails? Why don't Chua get a bonus to evasion? Why, if an Aurin watches "Fern Gully," does it not immediately die of embarassment? If anything, there is a seriously lack of "because lore" going on. Sadly, I have to blame the "Gimmie" mentality that has infected MMOs over the last coupe of decades. Every game declared every single player to be "the chosen one" from the first five minutes and then they wonder why 60% of players play alone, never bothering or wanting to interact with anyone else, ever. Well why should they? They're the "chosen one," they don't need friends. Every game has made it so that every class can be played solo from start to max level. Believe it or not, kids, once upon a time healer classes were in high demand because there wasn't that many healers... and the reason there wasn't that many healers is that could not be played solo. They had to find a group to work with. More effort. Effort - now there's a dirty word, these days. Now that same "gimmie" mentality that has already caused all races to be mostly meaningless due to fear of "min/max" playing (which is really funny because literally everything else in the entire game is built entirely around min/max playing) is saying that we should eliminate all racial class restrictions as well, lore - and logic - be darned. Why not eliminate the faction restrictions, too? Then the developers can save a lot of time & effort by eliminating all player character animations and replacing all player character models with levitating cardboard boxes with pictures of catgirls on them. Equality for everyone. The joy. | |} ---- Yeah. No worries. I think it would be a better use of my time to spend it arguing with someone who I think is flat-out wrong, rather than just approaching something from a different angle than I am - especially when we want the same things in the end. :D Ah, the good old epic 75+ page debates from the beta. I wonder what happened to some of those folks. | |} ---- I go back to some of the OB threads some time. There's a lot of white usernames in there. | |} ---- ---- Sorry, i'm having a bit of a mental block right now so i cant name 5 different games but i can think of just one at the moment...Guild Wars 2. :P | |} ---- It has only recently been called that, IIRC. Whatever, that's what I get for trying to use lore in an argument in the first place. The point is to not compound elitism with splitting the playerbase in half for NO gain. Your example of making the problem grow doesn't hold up. Just look at Guildwars 2 or EVE online or virtually any game with either a single faction or no faction. Regardless, you're attempting to associate two completely disparate things and it's not working. Sorry Madda, you'll have to do better than that.Besides, the entire point of me continuously harping on poor design decisions based on older, weaker games is to generate interest and awareness. Maybe, JUST MAYBE down the road players and devs alike will recognize the mistakes of the past instead of copying them. So yeah....maybe EQ:Next WILL improve the genre and have the features I want. We'll see. The lack of creativity in other titles is not an excuse for poor design choices. And again, for like the bazillionth time: Lore is not an excuse for poor design decisions either! Minecraft got away with it, so don't be so quick to dismiss it as a viable tactic. I know that's quite a bit of a different genre, but the point stands.You can have the most amazing story in the entire history of gaming, but if the gameplay sucks, players are going to leave your game in the dust for something that's more fun. To contrast, games with very little story/lore but amazing gameplay have historically done VERY well. The aforementioned Minecraft has ZERO story. Dark Souls has VERY little story and leaves most of it up to the players' imagination through hints given in item descriptions and a few short vids. But these concepts aren't mutually exclusive! You CAN have both good lore AND good gameplay. Edited October 15, 2015 by Elite Seraph | |} ---- ---- They have to be in some cases. Regardless of how you twist it, something like a Mechari Esper or any other weird combination wouldn't make sense. | |} ---- | |} ---- Unlike other constructs, a Mechari's consciousness is contained within a soul-core of crystalline exanite. Composed of all six primal energies, Exanite is one of the toughest, rarest, and most sought after substances in the galaxy. Pure Exanite, identified by its pure white colour, is a perfect balance of all six primal powers is nigh indestructible and almost impossible to find; only the Eldan have been known to have used this substance with regularity. Even the slightest imbalance in the elemental composition will seriously degrade the quality of Exanite. Impure crystals will take a tint related to the dominant power (red/orange/yellow for fire, blue for water, and so on). The substance is most famously used as the cores of Mechari, containing their primal patterns, their processing power, and their thoughts. It is also used in sacred artefacts of the Dominion, such as the sword of Azrion. Ultimately, everything in the WildStar universe is based on some aspect of primal power, which is the foundation of science - and what many call magic. It's an example of Clarke's Law (any sufficiently advance science will appear as magic to the less advanced, or words to that effect). So even Spellslingers, despite the name, are ultimately channeling forms of primal power, as are Espers. WHOMP WHOMP. | |} ---- ---- Innovation does sell. But it has to be done right, so that players are willing to commit their time and money. The problem is that MMOs all try and eat up HUGE amounts of player time to the exclusion of other games. Players know there's a big time investment expected and don't want to take a risk and neither do developers because of the huge cost of developing a modern MMO. I totally agree about the whole "chosen one" storyline issue. Way too many MMOs rely on this tired mechanism, but I guess it's the most cost effective way to tell a story. It's what happens when the lines between MMOs and single player RPGs becomes blurred. Branching storylines are costly to produce. Personally I'd love to see a return to sandbox MMOs where players create their own stories, by their actions and interactions. MMO development has shifted too much away from giving players an environment to make their own stories, encounters and memories and shifted towards providing a vehicle for selling content. The problem with this focusing on 'content' is that it gets eaten up too fast and the content locusts head off for their next MMO, blasting a gaping hole in the community when they go. MMOs live and die by their communities, something developers often fail to grasp. Story content also tends to slide into cliches because of the needs to churn out a constant stream of story, quests, dialogue etc. What's the point of lovingly crafting a story knowing that most players will likely skip though it in seconds in their race to get their noses stuck to the endgame grind? | |} ---- Clarke's Law still doesn't explain Mechari Espers. At least HernCo's response on the matter explains why some options aren't possible. | |} ---- Are there non-organic spellcasters in the game that contradict it? (I don't know). In any case, to be honest, I think a better reason for Mechari not being Espers and SpellSlingers would have been "When the Eldan created the Mechari, they put a block in to prevent their servitor race from attaining the kind of power that could be used to overthrow their masters. With the Eldan gone, the Mechari have been working to remove that block, without much success ... so far". I think it would be a much easier way to explain why Mechari Espers and SpellSlingers are added to the game by saying "they found a way to remove the block" than "they found a way to cast spells without being organic". | |} ---- But how, though? Technology? Science? That's the only way I could see it, and if this is how it becomes, then what would be the point of magic-based damage and defense in the game? | |} ---- ---- That's kind of the odd thing though, because it's the same source that says both what the Mechari soul cores are made of and that they can't channel primal power because they're non-organic. Granted, taken together, it breaks down when you subject it to the kind of scrutiny you're subjecting it to, but that's probably beyond the level of what the lore was written to to explain, or well beyond what the writers considered about the implications of applying physical laws to the new/alternate states of matter and energy they came up with. Definitely some things in the lore are meant to be accepted with a suspension of disbelief. As I pointed out earlier in this thread, the difference between Chua genders is such a mystery that even the player doesn't know. The Mechari, who uplifted the Chua to begin with, don't even know. And after a thousand years of being part of the Dominion, people are still hypothesizing that Chua may reproduce by budding. That's with high-tech med scanners and psychic interrogation. Forget "why can't Aurin be Engineers" or "Why can't Mechari be Espers". With all the pooled scientific and cultural knowledge that the Dominion and Exiles have at their disposal, and all the time that the races have spent together, the most pressing question that lore should be called to task on is "why isn't there enough known about Chua physiology, psychology and culture that the player can select their gender"? :D Like I've said before, though, where I'm coming from is that it's lore for a cartoon game firmly rooted in traditional fantasy and science fiction tropes, so I don't hold it to the same criteria as I would for a serious science fiction novel or movie (which I scrutinize with great zeal - so I can certainly appreciate the level of detail to which you're going). I definitely think there are better justifications for some things than what they've come up with, but I also think, those stumbling blocks aside, they've put a lot of thought into the lore. Edited October 16, 2015 by MadBlue | |} ---- Lore is a valid argument regarding race/class restriction. You can't have undead paladin, Everrrr, because it falls out of place, . But even in the lore's point of view it's still nonsensical for non Aurin Medic. If you read Medic page, it reads: "SO FAR ONLY THE DRAKEN CONSIDER CURING OF THE WOUNDED A DISGRACE PUNISHABLE BY MAIMING." Didn't say a damn thing about Aurin. Aurins are social, ecofriendly people who highly value healers of the people and the forest. How they can't be Medic is beyond me. Aurin engineers make a little bit more sense, but still... It's not like engineers are mini version of the Planet Reaper, right? right? I guess it's all because Carbine want to maintain human supremacy vibe, can't have two races having it all :(. That's racist! Edited November 3, 2015 by Merdin | |} ---- ---- It's Aurin don't do technology (hides his Aurin stalker-scientist). The Draken are the ones that don't believe in medicine. But your overall point is still valid. Gameplay should drive lore not the other way around. Using lore as the excuse is supremely lazy. Edited November 3, 2015 by PlasmaJohn | |} ---- I see you, lorebreaker! | |} ---- ---- Well there is always the SWGEmu project :P. That aside, swg failed precisely because they tried to get on those rails and in the process derailed exisiting players. Heck after getting 3/4th's of the way through the village and then the next day it's open to everyone and their mother?....yeah goodbye. I get the point you are making but felt I had to say that, unless I mistook your post as something else. (I will miss my tkm and my pistoleer :P) I find innovation fun in games, arguably in mmo's as well. The problem comes when you start trying to compare one game to another (as so often happens in these times) when there is no comparison to be drawn (let it stew and see if you get my point). As things are not always a 1:1 comparison as people make them out to be. | |} ---- Isn't it pronounced "Or-in" or "Or-en" Screw it...just pronounce it: "Catgirl" | |} ---- Orens?....Are we in the Northen Kingdoms under Temerian rule? :P | |} ---- Heh. Never said they were right. | |} ---- ---- ---- I agree that lore is kind of a BS reason to not allow something. The lore can change. It's all just a made up story and it can change at the will of the writer(s). So basically it's a choice that is made to keep limits in place rather than a "my hands are tied because a fictional story has power over me." | |} ---- ---- At first I was interested in playing as a Granok and then I checked out the character create. The customizations for that race do not even remotely interest me. The faces are really weird, the hair isn't anything close to what I'd be interested in, and I feel it needs some sort of race unique option that "pops" more. I LOVE the color options for the skin tones and the eyes though (even though the eye options are the same as every race but that's not a bad thing as the variety is really nice). The hair colors and styles are a huge issue for me. I'm really vain, I'll admit it. I can't even play female Humans because they ALL have freckles. At a distance it looks like acne to me and I had a REALLY bad case growing up. I can't bring myself to play a character that looks like that. Too many bad memories and negative emotions associated with that time. | |} ---- Um... aren't they just sentient rocks in robot bodies created by the Eldan? I mean... that is a little beyond comprehension right now as we know and understand things. Maybe they have some sort of psychic powers BECAUSE they are pure psychic energy (what gives them their sentience) stored inside a rock controlling a robot body. I don't play one but with my rough understanding of them it's really easy to come up with a "rough draft" of lore explanation for it as things currently are. Wouldn't need to change anything to add this specific race/class combo. | |} ---- ----